In a ballooning 3,225 words — a roughly average word count for the terminally verbose Facebook founder — Zuckerberg informed his miserably loyal 2.3 billion plus subjects that his company has happened upon a concept known as privacy, and, in doing so, it sees an opportunity. But can Facebook reform its 15-year legacy as devourer of all things private with a single sweeping, underedited screed from its copycat visionary and dark-pattern technocrat?

In the 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, director Kimberly Peirce notes that her 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry was originally rated NC-17—which is considered the kiss of death for movies seeking a broad audience—in part because a main character, Lana (Chloë Sevigny), had an orgasm that was “too long.” Peirce speculates that the problem lay in Lana’s undeniable pleasure—“There’s something about that that’s scaring them, that’s unnerving them.”

Even if you're not aware of it, it's likely that your emotions will influence someone around you today.

This can happen during our most basic exchanges, say on your commute to work. "If someone smiles at you, you smile back at them," says sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Yale University. "That's a very fleeting contagion of emotion from one person to another."

But it doesn't stop there. Emotions can spread through social networks almost like the flu or a cold. And the extent to which emotions can cascade is eye-opening.

The default pop cultural perspective remains that of the adult man, and from his vantage point, exposing adolescent female sexuality onscreen can feel predatory or perverted. These comedies have little interest in considering how those men will feel when they are transported into a girl’s bedroom. Girls’ feelings matter, too. And these girls feel so much.

When Viagra — sildenafil citrate — was tested initially as heart medication, its well-known properties for men were discovered. “Hallelujah,” said Big Pharma, and research ceased. However, in subsequent tests the same drug was found to offer total relief for serious period pain over four hours. This didn’t impress the male review panel, who refused further funding, remarking that cramps were not a public health priority.

In a world in which manifestations of hatred keep popping up, making it clearer every day that the human race is divided, feeling lost and hopeless makes sense. How can I enjoy the privileges of my life when I know that, just a few states away, families are being torn apart from one another?

It appears that I can't, that we can't. Instead, I—we—collapse. We self-medicate. We turn to excessive spending, drugs, and alcohol. All things that only make us feel worse.

The first reported case of artificial insemination by donor occurred in 1884: Dr. William H. Pancoast, a professor in Philadelphia, took sperm from his "best looking" student to inseminate an anesthetized woman. The woman was not informed about the procedure, unlike her infertile husband.

This is a common pattern: The same actors and institutions that decry “political correctness” and label demands for basic respect for marginalized people as attacks on free speech simultaneously hyper-police the language and behaviors from some groups and not others. These double standards strike at the core of what criticism of “PC culture” ultimately embodies: deep resentment of societal progress—specifically, progress that increasingly empowers people who have long been expected to shoulder their oppression in silence to speak up and ask for respect.

"If you think of the bonds and relationships and connections you have with the world around you as being energetic cords, cord cutting is cutting ties with people, places, or things that no longer serve you—or are actively harming you," says Kristen J. Sollée, the author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive. "The practice is frequently used with relationships—platonic, romantic, or sexual—but I personally think you can harness it for addictions, fears, and other traumas that might be holding you back as well," she adds.

Parnia doesn't find every aspect of polyamory to be as ideal as her own personal experiences. As a woman of color, she's particularly tuned into the racial blind spots present in many media representations of non-monogamy. Lamenting that mainstream representation of non-monogamy tends to center around white people, she says, "White people have also Columbus-ed polyamory to be a revolutionary tool, claiming it to be political, yet centering it around sex," continuing on to cite the fact that many non-European cultures have practiced some sort of polyamory far before colonisation.

But, as experts and anyone who's been stuck on their ex's Instagram since their breakup will tell you, the experience of obsessively tracking your ex's social media activity is more often triggering and sad than enjoyable.

This specific photo shoot came about when Zaire messaged me on Instagram. I was pretty full, didn’t have much time in Oakland left, but something told me that I should take it. From the moment I met them, I knew they were someone I definitely wanted to know.

Being compelled to sit at a desk for 8 hours a day affects me in a lot of really negative ways. It makes me feel stifled, trapped in my own head, and thoroughly drained by the end of most days. I don’t feel cut out for the whole “having a job” thing at all (judge away, baby boomers—we’re all just the products of our genetics and experiences), but like many of you, I feel financially tied to my employer because America doesn’t give a shit about people having health insurance and my company gives me great benefits and good pay.

Oftentimes, when the date of a past traumatic event comes around the following year, it becomes an anniversary — a traumaversary — that doesn’t have the same joy as a birthday or dating anniversary. Instead, these days can be filled with melancholy, fury, rage, resentment, heartache, and more for years and years.

We don’t just need historical documentaries, coming out narratives, or survivor stories—and we certainly don’t need any more devastating endings. We need something else, something that heterosexual people take for granted: romantic vision. We need the bread-and-roses romantic comedies that make our hearts soar to the theater ceiling.

Why didn't she just get out of there as soon as she felt uncomfortable? many people explicitly or implicitly asked.

It's a rich question, and there are plenty of possible answers. But if you're asking in good faith, if you really want to think through why someone might have acted as she did, the most important one is this: Women are enculturated to be uncomfortable most of the time. And to ignore their discomfort.

Unlike a friendship, where not responding to a text for two hours (or two days?) is acceptable, in dating, both the act of texting and not texting communicate something. How fast or how slow you respond says something to the other person.

It’s a common misconception that members of gay relationships have to map onto the roles of a straight couple: woman and asshole,” said Acharya. “But neither of us is the asshole; that’s the entire point.

The dictionary defines femme as “a lesbian whose appearance and behavior are seen as traditionally feminine.” However, that’s what makes it subversive. To be “femme” is to capture femininity on your own terms, reclaiming it from the heterosexual gaze and performing it instead for a queer community.

Stewart never had a public coming-out process, and somehow, that made me realize that I didn’t need one either. She just starting dating women openly and felt no need to redefine her sexuality, and I guess I figured I could do the same thing.